Terminal servers are typically special purpose computers that are used to connect a number of devices to one or more hosts or servers. Terminal servers may be particularly configured to facilitate communications between various components of a network. In some cases, terminal servers may be used to publish applications available on the hosts or servers to various other devices on the network. Networks having many devices may require groups of terminal servers (or “TS farms”) to provide the required communication capability.
In conventional networks having multiple terminal servers, the database of which applications are currently published is replicated on multiple servers, leading to potential fragility. Similarly, an “Allow List” (a list which defines privileges of the various network devices to access the applications available on the host) is stored at each terminal server within the network (or a TS farm). If the data in any of these multiple storage locations of a network gets out of sync, service to end-users may be degraded, and the problems encountered may be difficult to diagnose. When a new application is made available, each Allow List stored at each storage location in the network must be manually updated. In short, although desirable results have been achieved using conventional terminal server publishing systems, there is room for improvement.